Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image-based diagnosis assistance apparatus, method and program for assisting a doctor in diagnosing an organ, such as a liver and a lung, and in determining a region to be excised in a surgery.
Description of the Related Art
When a surgery for excising a diseased region of an organ, such as a liver and a lung, is performed, it is necessary to appropriately determine a part to be excised before the surgery by performing image-based diagnosis.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2007-054147 (Patent Document 1) proposes an image-based diagnosis assistance apparatus in which blood vessels, hepatic parenchyma, and a tumor part are extracted from an X-ray CT image of a liver. Further, a blood vessel that supplies nutrition to the tumor is identified by identifying, based on the position of a core line of the extracted blood vessel, the diameter of the blood vessel, or the like, a blood vessel the dominated region of which the extracted tumor belongs to, and the region dominated by the blood vessel is displayed as a part to be excised.
Meanwhile, it is desirable that the part to be excised includes a part in which the function of the organ is extremely low, while a normal region is kept as much as possible. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 7, the technique disclosed in Patent Document 1 determines a partial blood vessel 52p (a blood vessel branch from position P to the terminal end) that supplies nutrition to the tumor based on the positional relationship between the blood vessel 52 in the liver and the tumor 53, and determines a dominated region 55b of the partial blood vessel 52p, as apart to be excised. However, since the technique does not pay attention to an evaluation of the function of the organ, the determined excision region 55b does not appropriately include the region to be excised, in which the function is extremely low, in some cases. For example, a region 56b in FIG. 7 is not appropriately included in the region to be excised. In FIG. 7, a region 56 represents a region in which the function of the liver is extremely low.